Imagine, if you will: rusty drones ricocheting off ceramics etched out of an earth over two thousand centuries old; crooked nylon strings swaying, hypnotized, with a reptilian swagger; stagnant winds of burnt sienna dust whipping around a tribe whose ritualplay is a feeding frenzy of chipped stone and rotting wood pipe. FORGOTTEN GODS unites a trio of musicians dancing madly on the cutting edge of progressive electronic music. Multi-instrumentalist Steve Roach, lauded Spanish guitarist Suso Saiz, and Mexican techno-shaman Jorge Reyes have created the first true electronic/world music/ethnic fusion album of the 90's, an incredibly textured, fully-realized combination of alchemedia and technology. Witness the throbbing evanescence of "Mutual Tribes," as gusty electronics breeze through chunky polyrhythmic curls formed by clay pots, ocarinas, and other sundry percussive devices, while dreamy guitars are processed and short-circuited under the swelter. Few other musicians have evoked such hauntingly powerful images and rich, ancestral concepts before. Electrifying.

The music rises up from the darkness and howls at the moon. An ancient voice chants in serpentine ecstacy, only to subside and hover next to silence. In those moments when the sound dissolves beyond recognition, the subconscious leaks through, whispering of faded visions painted on stone, of memories suspended by the passage of time, of gods long forgotten. This is the world where Steve Roach, Jorge Reyes and Suso Saiz create their music. There are no scores, no plans, in the initial stages of composition. Like jazz artists who extemporize freely through a shared musical language, the members of Suspended Memories connect on an intuitive level of pure sound. But it isn't jazz they're playing. Roach, Reyes, and Saiz practice a form of collective improvisation from another time, another place, maybe one that never really existed before, except in the shrouded landscapes of a shaman's dream.